


Beneath Winter's Skin

by ButterflyGhost



Category: due South
Genre: Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:12:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written as part of Ushobwri's October themed challenges. In this case the prompt was: 'Lovecraftian Horrors.'</p></blockquote>





	Beneath Winter's Skin

At first I think it's just me. He doesn't act like he hears it, and he hears everything else. You think he'd hear this, though. Like something's creaking, way below the ice. I ask him a few times, thinking, you know - if  the ice is gonna break I want to know about it. But he just says, "I can't hear anything, Ray."

  
Bullshit.

 

The dogs can hear it too. They whimper at night and fidget in the dark. Dief crawls in with us sometimes, and I don't know whether he's comforting us, or if it's the other way round. Ben and me start zipping our sleeping bags together, and it's for more than warmth. 

 

He's Ben now. I don't know when that happened. A way back there we left our old lives behind. You got no choice but to dump the baggage when it's just dead weight. Mountie, cop, all those other lies. We're stripped clean in the mornings, and the light blows right through us. I love our mornings, when Ben's building up the fire or 'wetting the tea.' He sees me step out of the tent and his smile breaks just like the dawn. 

 

Yeah. I love the mornings.

 

The nights are getting worse. I wake up sometimes, and he's hanging on to me like he's a kid, and I'm his raggedy bear. 

 

"Do you hear it?" I say, and he lies: "No."

 

I figure out just how bad it's getting when he starts cracking out the glow sticks. Since when was he afraid of the dark?

  
One night I wake up, and he's talking to himself. For a minute I think it's like when he talked to himself back in Chicago, almost like there's a ghost in the room. Then I realise that's not it at all. It's a whole lot scarier. Because Ben's not speaking English. He's speaking Inuktitut or something. 

 

Ben's not speaking English; Something Else is speaking back.

 

The 'voice' makes no noise; it's louder than it's ever been. I feel it pushing up against my back - cold, so fucking cold. I feel it in the winter-black pulse of frozen water. It oozes beneath the packed down snow and bitter ice; it creaks and groans so slow. Continental shift and the world's bones breaking and the voice says -

 

_I was here before light or dark; I was here before beast or bird. I was here before man; I was here before time. I will be here when you are gone._

 

 _'Ben,'_ I want to say. _'Help. Save me. Get me out of here.'_

 

But Ben can't save me. I try to hang on to his voice - it's always been so strong. But he doesn't sound good. That voice is little and shaking, and far away.

 

_'What are you saying? Ben, what are you saying? Jesus, fuck, what are you saying? I don't understand....'_

 

His voice is rhythmic, weird, not quite a chant. I reach out to pull him to me; his hands are up by his face like he's hiding behind them. He's counting phrases on his fingers one by one. 

 

He's praying. 

 

My hand flies out, grabs his, and he turns frightened eyes toward me, keeps praying. I close my eyes, start whispering:  _"Zdrowaś Maryo, łaskiś pełna...."_ I don't even remember it hardly, but I do my best. Ben squeezes my hand. One warm thing to hang on to in the dark.

 

In the morning, we don't speak about it. We just turn the dogs around and head back south.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of Ushobwri's October themed challenges. In this case the prompt was: 'Lovecraftian Horrors.'


End file.
